


Conversations Before and After

by bobtherat



Category: Friends (TV)
Genre: Canon, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Humor, Love, POV Mike Hannigan, POV Phoebe Buffay, additional canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2019-08-17 14:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16518317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobtherat/pseuds/bobtherat
Summary: Mike and Phoebe drabbles based on the episodes where they were - actual or implied - together, and their imagined conversations. One shot collection. Mike and Phoebe fluff. Based on episodes from season nine and ten mostly.





	1. After The One With The Pediatrician (S09E03)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike and Phoebe go on a proper date this time.

Reality checked in at eleven o’clock. The refrain of traffic and collected voices, the humdrum tune of the city made its way back into his ears. A little while back, he heard nothing else but her voice; something somewhere between their steps halted that melody. Now, in the abrupt crash back, with the last part of her sentence swallowed by the usual ruckus of Manhattan, he wondered how long he’d been staring at her. Wordless.

Mike tensed.

“I had a really great time.”

Phoebe smiled at him, and he wondered if he was imagining the glint in her eyes.

His fists opened and closed, fingers tucking themselves into his palms. It was the first approach. That familiar thump in his chest. Like when he walked toward the baby grand on his first recital, or every moment since then that had made him feel this same way and he had to make a very good impression.

“I feel bad now,” she said, turning her face toward the pavement.

“Why? What is it?”

“Well, I gave Joey a really hard time last night for what happened, you know. I was just so mad at him that I didn’t even… realise how… cute the stranger he picked off the street for me was.”

There was some sort of effect from the smoky blue filters of the lamp post lights. There must be, Mike thought, because from where he was standing, the rest of the street looked washed out and why did his heart feel like it had made its way to his throat all of a sudden?

His hand itched to hold hers as they walked on, but he distracted himself.

“Can I tell you something?”

“Yea?”

“You know, we… we’ve actually met each other before.”

“Really?” Phoebe paused, “Huh. I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

Mike grinned, a short awkward laugh escaping with his breath.

“Well, not exactly met. More like—”

“When?” she interrupted, holding onto his forearm.

His body warmed up at the contact.

“At the coffee shop… Central Perk. Around a month ago.”

Phoebe stayed still, and he figured she was searching her mind for it. For that memory.

He had hoped that the episode had lingered in her head, too. A funny sort of luck that she had never realised before but that he could now present as a moment that they shared, perhaps even more special in that it had happened unintentionally.

“You were rushing out and I was about to go in. You said, er, Rachel? Yea, something about Rachel having the baby. You almost bashed my nose in with the door...”

Phoebe’s eyes widened, her mouth agape.

“Oh—”

“You remember?” Mike asked, hopeful.

“No. I really don’t.”

He smiled, gravity pulling down the excitement from his shoulders. So much for shared memory, he shook his head. Didn’t matter.

“I didn’t hurt you though, did I?”

“Nah, you barely caught me. I leaned back in time."

“Oh, okay… good! I’m so sorry about that, ugh,” she said with a slight whimper.

Phoebe’s hand pressed lightly on his arm before sliding away. Mike felt something swirl inside his chest. Courage? Was that the word for what was urging him to reach for her hand back?

For a while, they carried on in silence, sharing glances as they watched their steps continue in the same direction. Sentences formed themselves before fading into white inside Mike’s head. Over and over until courage, or whatever it was, pushed words that he didn’t know were on his tongue, out of his mouth.

“To be honest, I hung around the coffee shop more often after that happened.”

“Really? How come?”

She smiled. He could go on and on about that, rewind the look on her face in his mind. He knew this feeling – he’d had this feeling before – but the speed by which it hit him this time made him doubt between the present and his imagination.

She crossed her arms close against her chest.

“Well, I was kind of hoping to see you again,” Mike said.

Phoebe bit on the tip of her thumb, about to say something.

“I really wanted to… you know—”

“You wanted to what?”

Mike grinned. “I don’t know… I just… well, I had a feeling that I would see you there… again.”

He saw how her cheeks were flushed despite the chilly air. There was a chance that he could walk away that night without so much as a kiss goodbye, but that chance was slim. Unlikely. And regardless, he had a whole night with her to replay for at least a week’s worth of dreams. Or as soon as the next instance he could get this close to her.

The periphery was a navy void, neither one too conscious about where they were standing.

Mike watched as Phoebe’s hands rubbed up and down her arms. His lungs, filling up as he waited for a response.

“Are you cold?” he finally broke the silence, moving to take his coat off.

“No, it’s… I’m okay.”

Phoebe turned slightly, motioning toward the building behind her.

“I’m here. This is my, erm, this is where I live.”

“Oh… okay. Let me just—”

He caught her hand to lead her to the entrance. Maybe it was a little forward? He thought, and then noticed how their hands fit so well together. Did he have to let go?

Phoebe stalled at the door. Like in a movie scene, fiddling with her keys.

“Well, I had a great time. I know I said already but… I really did.”

Mike tried not to smile, but the corners of his mouth betrayed him. Again, and probably a little too much.

“I’ll buy Joey a cappuccino tomorrow,” he replied, “since he arranged this… sort of. Well, he got tonight to happen somehow.”

He noticed the slight tremble in her fingers and something that lit up in her face exactly when his eyes locked onto hers.

“Are you sure you’re not cold?”

It was at the same moment that their eyes shifted down to his coat’s lapels. In one sweep of a second, he found her hands against his chest, pinning the coat down in position. Whatever it was – electricity, a kind of rhythm, the thrill of pursuit – and whether it was pushing or pulling or calling out to him, it seemed to be working the same way inside her.

Her lips against his felt better than he imagined. So much better, he couldn’t have imagined it.

A gust of wind brushed past his neck when she pulled away.

“Do you want to come inside?” Phoebe asked with a slight shiver. “I’d really like to try on your coat.”

#


	2. After The One With The Sharks (S09E04)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike reflects on his marriage. He also finds out how close Phoebe is with her best friends. The guy ones.

There is a special familiarity that develops only between an instrument and a musician. See, instruments become an extension of the body if held long enough. They make thoughts and memories accessible, tangible. Available, perhaps, is the best way to put it _._ Compared to such a bond, more vulnerable relationships – like his marriage, for example – prove unreliable. Flimsy _._ The thing is, as with instruments, we absorb the weight of someone else’s emotions besides our own. And like instruments, we can only let ourselves be played a certain number of times before the strings break and the music stops.

The difference is that you can’t buy replacements for figurative strings inside broken lawyers. Not in Boston or the Tri-State area anyway. For her guitar though, there’s a music supplies store right around his apartment.

Phoebe froze in the doorway of her bedroom, fresh out of the shower. Across her, Mike sat on the bed, hugging her guitar to his chest, still naked under the covers.

“I barely strummed it, I swear. I am _so_ sorry.”

He transferred the instrument to her outstretched arms after she settled beside him, watching her run her thumb over the rest of the strings before another one broke off with a dull twang.

“Ugh. No, it’s okay. I should have replaced these months ago anyway,” Phoebe mumbled. Her bottom lip curling upward as she exhaled in defeat.

Mike rubbed her back, attempting consolation.

“I’m really sorry. I’ll bring it to the shop. There’s one next to my apartment. I’ll get new strings attached on it today, I promise.”

He noted the faded finishing and notches on the wooden body. The pick guard was mapped with scratches and the tuning pegs were tarnished, already barely even silver.

“Alright,” Phoebe said, pouting. “You know, normally, I pound people who touch my guitar.”

He drew away slightly at her remark and a small smile broke across her lips.

“I’ll make an exception for you just this once.”

Phoebe cradled the instrument in her arms with a tenderness that stirred something inside him.

“You’re pretty protective with it, huh?”

She nodded, tracing the guitar’s neck with a finger.

“I found it in the subway on my sixteenth birthday. Kind of like fate, you know? After two years of nothing making sense.”

She sighed.

“It’s been with me for so long. Even longer than any of my best friends–”

Mike thought back to the Bechstein in Connecticut. The sitting room of his parents’ house. It was the first sight that greeted him home eleven months ago. His life and career in pieces. He was six when he started learning how to play that piano. Thirty years later, it remained perfect under his touch.

Phoebe leaned back on the headboard, positioning the guitar so that its body rested over the length of hers. Mike followed, stretching over his side of the bed. Her sheets smelled like peppermint and patchouli, and something about being there with her right now plucked at something in his chest.

“How long have you known them? Your friends, I mean. Joey, Ross, Rachel, and erm–”

“Monica and Chandler?” Phoebe grinned. “Ergh! Long enough!”

She giggled, fixing her gaze toward the ceiling.

“Monica, I’ve known the longest ‘cause I moved in with her, and Rachel is the most recent one. We met when she left her groom at the altar–”

She counted on her fingers.

“—nine years ago.”

Mike’s mind flashed back to that time. Nine years ago, he _was_ a groom at the altar, too. Had a band on his finger and everything. Nine years ago, he and his bride had sworn to love and cherish each other, in sickness and in health and in every other possible swerve that life would lead them to. The first of which at their reception, thirty minutes after the blessed event. When his brother called out to him from the men’s room, face covered in lipstick marks, to tell him his bride had been there all along. Passed out after a frenzy and what looked like several attempts to make out with whoever went in there. He spent the night of his honeymoon filling out forms at the nearest facility.

The reverb of laughter reached his ears after a moment, pulling him slightly out of his thoughts.

“Ross said something about wanting to, you know, get married again and in she waltzed! It was so funny. You should have seen her. She walked into the coffee shop, still in her wedding dress!” Phoebe giggled. “And the look on everyone’s faces!”

He wondered how things would have been if he had stayed in New York then instead. Could he have not lived through the biggest mistake of his life? Could he have possibly walked into the coffee shop nine years ago, too?

Mike turned on his side toward her, propping his head up on his elbow.

“Were you ever, erm, in a relationship with any of them?”

“Huh?”

“You know… did you ever date any of them?”

“Oh! Well, sure, I dated Mon and Rachel–”

His eyebrows rose in disbelief.

“Yea, I dated them. _At the same time._ ”

Mike took in a sharp breath. In the short time he’d spent with her – the very short time they’d spent together – he had learned to wait for the explanation that comes a little while after each of her, erm, stories.

“Of course, I didn’t!”

Phoebe exclaimed. Finally. Mike stared at her as she rolled to her side. Joining her in laughter, although perhaps a tad hesitant, as though he expected her to say something else, while also struggling to expel the stifled air in his throat.

“They would’ve never gone for it–”

She stood up, carrying the guitar in both hands.

“Yea, they wouldn’t. No, they wouldn’t have…” he stuttered.

Mike sat up and dragged himself to the end of the bed until his legs were over the edge, feet planted on the carpet.

“So, er, how about… how about the guys?”

The locks clicked shut as Phoebe secured the instrument in its case.

“No, never.”

Mike sighed with relief. Quietly, so she wouldn’t notice.

“I wouldn’t say I didn’t consider it.”

Phoebe made her way back, stopping at the foot of the bed and resting her hands on his shoulders.

“I mean, it worked so well for Monica and Chandler. They made it seem so great…”

She pushed him back a little. Her legs straddling either side of him so that she was sitting on his knees, facing him.

“They made it look easy. You know. Falling in love with your best friend.”

Mike locked his arms around her waist. Safe and steady. His mind was slowly drifting away from the conversation.

“Or it could also be really messy. Like Ross and Rachel.”

She mumbled almost inaudibly.

“Or Joey with Rachel.”

Phoebe shifted her attention to playing with his hair.

“How about you? Ever dated a friend?”

Mike frowned in thought, considering the question as well as chasing away the urge to kiss her right then instead. He would have to tell her. Soon enough, he would.

“I did. Yes.”

Phoebe turned away.

“Oh. Well, erm, how long were… how long were you together?”

Three years in law school. Nine years as husband and wife.

He reclined on the bed, taking her weight along with his.

“Long enough.”

Phoebe giggled, trying to twist herself away from his fingers which were running up and down her sides. Mike teased and laughed along with her.

He didn’t want to talk anymore.

“No, but, wait, Mike–”

With one hand, his fingertips dug into the fabric of her robe, peeling it off. With another, his nails clawed at the sash, undoing it completely. Enough questions.

“But I wanted to ask–”

It didn’t matter. Not anymore.

Their palms pressed against each other’s, fingers clasping together.

None of it mattered. Right at that moment, he was finally starting to hear music again.

#


	3. After The One With Phoebe's Birthday Dinner (S09E05)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phoebe goes back to a familiar place after her disastrous birthday. The next day, Mike arranges a quick do-over for the friends.

She could not remember how pain felt. The real kind. The kind where your heart felt like glass that had already slipped out of your fingers. Already broken into shards and scattered at your feet. The kind where it felt like everything had been scooped out of your chest and there was nothing else left there. She knew what pain felt like. The bitterness of being so hollowed out, that feeling as well as the absence of it were one and the same. But like paint smeared on the palette after the portrait is done, she could not distinguish it anymore. It turned out, after you’ve had too much of it, it becomes as mundane as each day fading into the next. So when she took off her high heels and sat on a bench at a hidden spot in Central Park at 9:22 PM, and when someone looked at her twice before walking past, she didn’t think much about how she might have looked right then. Still in the dress she spent possibly too much money on. She didn’t think much about the cold enveloping her at that moment, or the fact that she lied about getting a call from her boyfriend just so she could get away and no one would see her like this. _Back to this_. People get so used to seeing happiness on everyone else’s faces, they often forget how hard it is for some. To find even the smallest source of that emotion. To grow enough smiles for each day, from forgotten seeds of hope hidden under thick layers of emptiness. It took years and years for her. To become her. To be happy. She knew pain, sure. She had known it every day for so long, that she didn’t know anymore that it felt like this.

Phoebe curled up on the bench and closed her eyes tight. Hidden from everyone. New York wailed with horns and sirens. It trembled with the trains, rustled with the leaves and briskly footsteps behind the black curtain of her eyelids.

Birthdays were five presents, five birthday cards, and a birthday cake. That’s what birthdays meant. Birthdays meant being with five people. Five _specific_ people. Always. Or at least, for most of the past decade. The last birthday she had celebrated without them was when she had just been released from county jail. Poughkeepsie, 1991. All other birthdays before that weren’t worth mentioning.

When she opened her eyes in the morning, her skin was covered in goosebumps and the bed was cold and Mike wasn’t beside her anymore. Also, something smelled good from the kitchen.

Phoebe rolled on her side, kicking the blankets off. The sinking pit in her stomach was still there. She had told Mike she was fine last night. Said that she understood what her friends were going through and that she was being stupid. ‘We have to grow up at some point, right?’ she said. ‘And that’s what they’re doing. I mean, we all have responsibilities. They have responsibilities!’

Was she crying last night? She shook her head. _Ugh. I don’t want to remember._

She yawned and stretched, feet landing on last night’s dress as she got up from the bed.

#

Mike found her making her way towards him in the kitchen when he turned.

“No, Phoeb–” he whined as she wrapped her arms around his waist. “Go back to bed. I’m supposed to bring you breakfast there.”

“Oh, that’s what this is?”

There were pancakes on the tray before him. Sliced strawberries, yogurt, orange juice, daffodils cut across the stems.

He noted disappointment in the sudden furrowing of her brows as soon as her gaze landed on the flowers.

“They’re fake,” Mike smiled, “—and biodegradable.”

Phoebe exhaled in relief.

“Just wanted to jazz up the presentation.”

He took her hand to lead her to the table. Instead, she kissed him on the cheek before propping herself up on the counter, sitting on the empty space with a chuckle.

Mike could not help but grin. The sight of her in his t-shirt, hair tousled, picking at the pancakes that he made for her. She had that look. A kind of joy that was so pure. So forthright and so enthusiastic over the smallest things. Right then, over strawberries and pancakes. Lately, it was the only thing he wanted to see all the time. Happiness radiating from her face.

The night before was a different story. When he found her standing against a wall outside the piano bar, stray leaves in her hair. When she kept saying she was fine. Over and over while he held her. Over and over even after he had stopped asking. When she cried under the covers with her back towards him, and he found out that she talked in her sleep. The night before, he heard her say ‘ _alone._ ’

The clock on the wall ticked past seven. They should have been there by now.

“Mm. You are the sweetest boyfriend ever! Thank you–”

The mild pressure from her lips on his snapped him out of his thoughts.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t myself last night.”

Mike reached for her hand. “Don’t worry about it. It’s okay–”

“No, it’s _not_. It’s not okay. It’s–”

Phoebe shook her head.

“It’s not fair.”

Tears started welling in her eyes even as she forced herself to smile.

“I guess I never thought I would _actually_ lift out of the group and that it would be this… sudden.”

She let out a weak laugh.

“But it makes sense, I guess. Babies aren’t easy, right? Making them, taking care of them. It’s all too hard and I’m… I don’t know. I guess, I got too used to things being the way they were. Having them around. Having people I could… call family…”

Mike watched as she wiped her tears away with the back of her hands. His chest felt like it was about to give way. It was hard to see her like this.

“I’m being dumb,” Phoebe snickered, “and selfish. It’s not like I’ve been _such_ a good friend anyway. I tease them and test them and wonder if they could love even the worst version of me. You should ask Ross.”

7:15. He would hate for her to continue feeling like this. If they were coming at all, they better get there soon.

“Why do you keep looking at the clock? Am I boring you? I’m boring you, aren’t I?”

Mike snapped back to attention.

“What? No! Of course not! That’s not it, erm–”

“Then why do you keep looking at the clock?”

He shrugged off his nerves with a curt chuckle, taking a swig of orange juice from her glass. The words that came next were said in quick succession.

“It’s just, er, in my line of sight. Listen, Phoeb–”

The contrast between warm skin and cold metal rings unnerved him a little as he gave her hand a gentle squeeze. His mind was blank and whatever else he was saying was just a way to buy them more time. To prove one thing for her. He could only do that if they showed up.

“I… I want you to know something. I want you to know that–”

A buzz. Knocks. Then voices.

Saved by the bell.

Mike stood aside, exhaling in relief. He watched Phoebe’s face glow as they greeted her with the biggest smiles when she opened the door. The only five people she cared for the most in the entire world. All of them came. Plus the baby. _Surprise!_ They had balloons and a cake and a bunch of weird presents, all of which she readily accepted.

There was no other way he could prove to her that she was loved if her best friends had not followed through. It took a lot of guts for him to call and ask people he didn’t actually know to come over to his apartment at such an ungodly hour (7 AM was still too early), but they were more than willing to make up for the disastrous dinner.

The six of them, and the baby, were a beautiful picture together. A picture he was yet to be a part of. Soon, he hoped. One day, maybe, Phoebe would look just as happy in a picture that included him.

#

Between the lull of minutes he spent walking after work, his mind drifted away to the sleepy sentences they shared in the middle of the night. Last Wednesday night.

_“I was released from Poughkeepsie on my birthday. I spent the rest of the money on a train ride to Manhattan,” she whispered. Half of her face buried in a pillow._

_“That was in 1991. I woke up on a bench in Central Park three days after.”_

_He mumbled, dipping in and out of stupor._

_“How did you know it was three days after?”_

_“There was a hobo living near the bench and he told me.”_

Mike took a detour from his usual route to cross the park. They agreed to meet there, Phoebe and him, and he was glad to have arrived before she did.

“ _I don’t need other people to survive. I’ve learned to do that on my own, you know…”_

He chose a spot that was visible from where she was coming. So that she would be able to see him easily.

“ _I want the ones I love to love me back because they want to. To be there for me because they mean to.”_

He waved her over, walking half of the way towards her; she, closing the rest of the distance.


End file.
